What I learned when I met all the big players in UK travel credit cards

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• Grant says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:27

  Hi All – first time post but have something worthwhile to share here 🙂

  Apple Pay:-
  1. There is no actual limit – Apple have done a terrible job marketing this but the £30 contactless limit has NOTHING to do with Apple – in fact Apple Pay is limitless unless the retailer for whatever reason decides to cap it. That’s actually really important because it does mean you can use for ANYTHING once it breaks into enough retailers.

  2. Apple have NO INTENTION of creating “Apple Bank” or their own merchant network. They looked at it and qualified it out very early on – Apple Pay was created by them to ensure people keep using their phone. They just want people to have their phone in their hand for whatever reason.

  Hope that helps in some way

  • Matt says:

    4 Feb4 February 09:41

    In regards to your Apple pay points.

    1. Correct there is no limit set by Apple pay, however Apple pay is a contact-less transaction and the standard limit is £30 (set by Visa and MasterCard). However there is something called High Value Contactless, which when implemented allows devices such as iPhone with ApplePay or in the Android/SamsungPay etc to allow for transactions with no limit – this only works with phone with verification of some kind (thumb verification) and not with standard contactless cards. What adds complexity is that each merchant needs to implement this with their Payment Service Provider. Pret a Manger has implemented High Value Contactless with their PSP hence why there is no limit in their stores.

  • Alastair says:

    4 Feb4 February 09:59

    Indeed. I bought a new iPhone in the States and jokingly said ‘can I pay with my Apple watch?’ Sure enough, a quick wave of the assistant’s terminal and $800 later I had the phone in my hand. Was almost a little scary.

    I have noticed though that most times I use it, the terminal does dial up and authorise the transaction, even if it takes just a couple of seconds on a newer machine – unlike when using the card which doesn’t authorise it, which would definitely fit in with what Matt describes.

    • Matt says:

      4 Feb4 February 13:25

      Yes – for a higher value amount it will have to dial the bank to check you have the funds.

    • Talay says:

      5 Feb5 February 04:39

      It isn’t the newer machine which speeds it up but rather a connection through an Ethernet cable to fast broadband versus a PSTN telephone call.

      In my retail outlets, the time difference is (relatively) huge at about 1 or 2 seconds via Ethernet and 10 to 15 seconds via PSTN.

• Singing Dwarf says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:40

  Rob – for the purposes of the FCA registration, is a website classed as ‘trade premises’ !?!

  • Rob says:

    4 Feb4 February 09:52

    Honestly can’t remember which box I ticked! The whole thing is bizarre though. I need a licence to link to, say, the Virgin website card page. Virgin also has to have a licence in order to link to the MBNA page. Effectively, you need to be licensed to introduce someone to an introducer.

• Metatone says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:41

  I’m a corner case, but I’d certainly pay an increased fee for a BA card that came with Bronze.
  My business flying just doesn’t suit the new BA system, so it would be nice to have another route to quicker check-in. (I’m not really a lounge person most of the time.)

• Matt says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:43

  Card issuers definitely want to move away from co-brands there is limited value in doing co-brands due to the interchange caps.

  I always like to use AMEX for the rewards but AMEX could get pulled into the Interchange caps in the near future and this would harm their value proposition. AMEX already charges fees for some cards and if they are capped at 0.3% instead of charging whatever they negotiate today (1.5-3%) then this will cause big issues which an increase in fees would not overcome easily.

• Guesswho2000 says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:46

  Good luck actually getting the referral emails to turn up, I must have tried about twenty times, but they never arrive!

  • Rob says:

    4 Feb4 February 09:48

    Lloyds tries to identify you from the email address. If you have ANY connection to the bank, including having ever had an account, your referral request is deleted without telling you. This is why the emails take 5 days to arrive.

    Some ISPs also delete the emails because the heading says ‘Rob has a secret to share with you’ which it sees as spam and trashes it before it even gets to your inbox.

    • Wally1976 says:

      4 Feb4 February 10:47

      Rob, are you saying that you can’t refer someone who already has other accounts with Lloyds? That’s not in the terms.

      • Rob says:

        4 Feb4 February 10:51

        I know it isn’t in the terms – but that is the case.

        Not just someone who has other accounts with Lloyds. Someone who has EVER had an account with Lloyds and linked the same email to it. They also appear to include Halifax in this.

        What do you think they do for 5 days? What throws me is that I cannot believe it is cost effective to pay people to go through their database like this.

        • Kathy says:

          4 Feb4 February 15:27

          So they judge this on the email address??

          Hmm…..

        • Rob says:

          4 Feb4 February 15:44

          Yes, use an email they don’t recognise and it goes through OK.

      • AndyR says:

        4 Feb4 February 16:35

        I think it just the email address they check as I have a Lloyds current account and previously had the old Lloyds Airmiles cards and I got referred ok.

  • Guesswho2000 says:

    4 Feb4 February 20:32

    That’s interesting, as I have an account with TSB, but this was only opened in the last year, but have never in my life held an account or credit card with Lloyds or Lloyds TSB – my OH has a long dormant Lloyds account. she’s my referral, but theres pretty much no chance they’d link the two, unless their systems are more advanced than we think, its an ancient account, and has been dormant since before I even knew her!

    • Guesswho2000 says:

      4 Feb4 February 20:52

      Oh, and email addresses wouldn’t have matched, we use one of my email addresses for these sort of things, to minimise the amount of effort she has to put in – I can just about get her to spare an hour a month for cancellation calls!

  • Alan says:

    6 Feb6 February 15:22

    Same issue here – doesn’t seem to want to send anything through!

    Anyone know an alternate way to do referrals for this card?

• Adam says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:55

  Further to your Marriott point, I note with interest from your link that Marriott Rewards, LLC (with a principal place of business address noted as 10400 Fernwood Road, Bethesda Md, 20817, i.e. Marriott Corporate headquarters), has a lapsed permission relating to consumer credit.

  If you click through here (http://fca-consumer-credit-interim.force.com/CS_RegisterSearchPageNew?accId=647450) and click on “Permissions”, you’ll see that it previously had an Interim Permission to conduct credit broking/credit intermediation, but this interim permission ended on 30th June last year…

• The_Real_A says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:00

  Nice article Rob – i assume most of your readership are interested in the business aspect of the industries that are related to our points use.

  I wonder how big a userbase Rob would need to launch his own credit card? 🙂

  • Matt says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:28

    There are still a lot of smaller issuers trying to run co-brand cards but the economics of it really isn’t good. You can see the Owls card offers a 9 month interest free on season ticket purchase but nothing much else, therefore there is limited benefit to enroll into this card, especially as some issues over 2 years or more interest free. I doubt there is much benefit to SWFC in promoting this card… Also don’t forget the interchange cap only came into play on 9th December, so much of the negative impact will not yet have been seen.

    • The_Real_A says:

      4 Feb4 February 14:41

      I think what we miss is the high net worth of the “points” collecting demographic. An annual fee provided it gave value is not the barrier it is in the general population. An app based solution without the traditional call centeres is very cheap indeed. Monese set up a pan european “bank” for less than £500k – a CC/charge card setup along side this operation could be operated for peanuts.

• Nathan says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:15

  Off topic in afraid but when you next meet or talk to Daniel from propeller travel can you feedback my disappointment in the time it’s taken to get any reply from them. I emailed them a few days ago and heard nothing back, chased the next day, still nothing, tried calling only to get the message to email them and filled out the online form and still heard nothing.
  For a travel company who may get requests for last minute bookings, it’s really very poor.

  • Jason says:

    4 Feb4 February 13:34

    I emailed them 2 days ago and haven’t had a reply. I’m not chasing it.

    • Nathan says:

      4 Feb4 February 15:29

      Its really poor to be honest! I have 2 hotels I’m looking to book through them but not getting any reply! Sadly the added benefit of booking SPG through them is worth it but I’m really not impressed with them this time round.

      • Pol says:

        4 Feb4 February 17:41

        I had a similar problem with propeller so I headed over to flyertalk and found a US based guy. He always answers within 24 hours, usually much quicker. So far used him for an SPG luxury privileges booking in Paris, a booking in DC and a house rental in Barbados. Very happy with his service.

        • dgsupersonic says:

          4 Feb4 February 21:07

          How about sharing his details?

        • Kipto says:

          4 Feb4 February 22:04

          +1 could do with a decent contact in the US.

        • Pol says:

          5 Feb5 February 06:55

          I’ll drop him an email and ask if I can post his details.

  • Waribai says:

    5 Feb5 February 05:39

    Didn’t he have some big problem with ex EU tickets and BA chasing him for ‘fraud’?

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